n February 12, 1949, a
motorcade made its way from Padre Faura all the way to a cogon-strewn
expanse in Quezon City. At its head, borne on an open vehicle, was the
Oblation, bronzed symbol of the University of the Philippines, on its
way to its future home. This ceremony marked the university's transfer
from its original site in Manila to its 493-hectare campus Diliman,
which would have more room for the University's expansion as it
fulfilled its role as educator to the nation.

UP
Diliman is the flagship university of the UP System. It is the
administrative seat of the system as well as an autonomous university
in its own right. UP Diliman is not only the home of diverse colleges,
offering 94 graduate and undergraduate courses, it also runs several
centers of research, many of which have been declared by the Commission
on Higher Education as National Centers of Excellence.

The
University of the Philippines was established in 1908 with three
initial colleges, the College of Fine Arts, the College of Liberal Arts
and the College of Medicine and Surgery occupying buildings distributed
along Padre Faura and R. Hidalgo in Manila as well as a School of
Agriculture in Los Banos, Laguna. The succeeding years saw the
establishment of additional colleges: the College of Law and the
College of Engineering in Manila, as well as units in Los Baños
for the College of Agriculture and Forestry.

The
student population had shot up from the original 67 to 7849 in 1928,
and continued to rise in the succeeding years. It was soon necessary
for UP to make room for new colleges and create more academic programs.
By 1939 the Board of Regents decided that it was time to look for a
larger site, and sought funding to acquire a 493-hectare lot in
Diliman. Construction began on that same year. However, with the
outbreak of World War II and the invasion of Japanese troops in 1942,
the university had to close some of its colleges while maintaining only
some units such as the Colleges of Medicine, Engineering and Pharmacy
operational. At the same time, two buildings-which were intended for
the College of Liberal Arts and the Colleges of Law and Business
Administration--and had already been built in Diliman, were occupied by
Japanese forces.

When the war ended in 1946, the College of Law and College of
Liberal Arts buildings were left with extensive damages. UP President
Bienvenido Gonzales immediately endeavoured to restore the university
to normal operations. He sought a grant of P13 million from the
US-Philippines War Damage Commission, and this amount was used for an
intensive rehabilitation and construction effort during the post war
years. A map of Diliman campus made in 1949 shows the areas designated
for future construction: the map records the optimism with which UP
embarked upon its expansion projects; soon after the Diliman landscape
was dotted with new buildings: the Library, the College of Engineering,
the Women's Residence (what is now Kamia Residence Hall, the
Conservatory of Music, the Administration Building and the President's
Residence. Meanwhile, the rest of the colleges and administrative
offices had to make do with temporary shelters, quonset huts made of
sawali and galvanized iron.

It was amidst these bucolic surroundings that UP's 40th anniversary
celebration was held in February 1949, highlighted by the transfer of
the Oblation. By then, administrative functions of the whole university
were already relocated to the new campus, and the governance of UP's
regional units in Manila, Los Baños, Baguio, and Cebu were also
located in Diliman. It was also in 1949 that general commencement
exercises were first held at the new campus.

The following decade saw the establishment of new institutes at
Diliman, UP's response to the demand for more specialized fields of
study at the same time that it was reformulating its approaches to
tertiary education. One reform introduced into the university in 1959
was the General Education Program, a series of core courses prescribed
for all students at the undergraduate level. Most of these courses were
being taught at the then College of Liberal Arts, and UP President
Vicente Sinco saw fit to reorganize the college. He created the
University College, which would offer the core subjects to be taken in
the first two years of the undergraduate course, and the College of
Arts and Sciences and Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, which would
offer major courses in the humanities, natural sciences and social
sciences.

At the same time UP also set up additional training centers
for spawning the nation's bureaucrats and technocrats and some of these
institutes were subsequently elevated into colleges. Thus, during
President Sinco's term these institutes and colleges were already in
place: the Institute of Public Administration (1952), the Statistical
Center (1953), the Labor Education Center, which would become the
School of Labor and Industrial Relations (1954), the Asian Studies
Institute (1955), the College of Home Economics(1961), and the
Institute of Library Science (1961).

By the end of Carlos P. Romulo's term as UP President in
1968, UP had also become not only an institution of education, but also
a center of research, a veritable think tank, while many of its faculty
served as advisers and consultants in the national government. Romulo's
administration was marked by the establishment of the Population
Institute, the Law Center and the Applied Geodesy and Photogrammetry
Training Center in 1964, the Institute of Mass Communications, the
College of Business Administration, and the Institute of Planning in
1965, the Computer Center, the Institute for Small-Scale Industries in
1966, the Institute of Social Work and Community Development in 1967
and the Asian Center in 1968.

Despite the period of unrest that followed under the yoke of Martial
Law, UP's administrators tried to sustain the university's educational
priorities and institutional autonomy. At the height of activism in the
university, President SP Lopez began the system of democratic
consultation in which decisions such as promotions and appointments
were made through greater participation with faculty and administrative
personnel. Lopez also initiated the reorganization of UP into the UP
System to decentralize governance. The Los Baños campus was the
first to be declared an autonomous unit under a chancellor in November
1972. Giving a boost to UP's growth was the P150 million grant from the
national budget for UP's Infrastructure Development Program, which was
distributed throughout the System. In Diliman, it funded the
construction buildings for the College of Business Administration,
Zoology, the Institute of Small-Scale Industries, the Transport
Training Center and the Coral Laboratory of the Marine Sciences
Institute. Kalayaan Residence Hall and housing for lwo-income employees
were also built around this time.

Onofre
D. Corpuz continued the reorganization initiative by declaring UP
Manila, then known as the Health Sciences Center, and UP Visayas as
autonomous units. At the same time, the prioritization of tourism as a
national industry also led to the establishment of the Asian Institute
of Tourism. New centers for research and degree granting units such as
the Third World Studies Center (1977), Creative Writing Center,
National Engineering Center (1978), UP Extension Program in San
Fernando (1979), Institute of Islamic Studies (1973), UP Film Center,
National Center for Transportation Studies (1976) were also
established. UP celebrated its 75th year 1983.

President
Edgardo Angara's Diamond Jubilee project rallied the alumni all over
the country and abroad in a fund-raising blitz which eventually raised
P80 million. This money was earmarked for the creation of new
professorial chairs and faculty grants. Angara also organized two
committees, the Management Review Committee (MRC) and the Committee to
Review Academic Programs (CRAP) to evaluate and recommend measures for
improving UP's operations. The MRC report led to the wide-ranging
reorganization of the UP system, most importantly, the further
decentralization of UP administration and the declaration of UP Diliman
as an autonomous unit in March 23, 1983. UP College Baguio was then
placed under the supervision of UP Diliman. Meanwhile, the College of
Arts and Sciences also underwent a reorganization to become three
separate colleges, the College of Science, the College of Arts and
Letters and the College of Social Sciences and Philosophy. As the
flagship university, UP Diliman leads the rest of the units in sheer
size.

By 1997, UP Diliman had 18,935 students distributed among 12
pre-baccalaureate, 74 baccalaureate and 8 post-baccalaureate programs,
which in turn are handled by 2,441 faculty members. Students enjoy the
low board and lodging rates at 10 residence halls and the extensive
collection of publications, including those in multimedia format, in
its libraries. Ensuring that all the administrative and academic
functions of the university is a job that falls on the shoulders of its
chancellors. UP Diliman has also kept up with the information-driven
culture all over the globe. Installation of a fiber-optic network
linking the various colleges in the campus, or DilNet, which in turn
serves as UP's gateway to the global network of the Internet, was begun
in the term of Roger Posadas as Chancellor, and continues apace under
Chancellor Claro T.Llaguno. The campus has also welcomed fledgling
technology companies in its technology park.

Throughout
its history, UP has had to cope with cost-cutting measures dictated by
the national government. The Commonwealth Property Development Project
was conceptualized as latest solution to the problem of funding the UP
System's continuing expansion. It proposes the development of a
98.5-hectare lot on the northwestern side of the UP Diliman property
into a commercial zone through a joint venture partnership with a
private developer. The project went through several rounds of
consultations in 1997 with constituents from the entire UP System, and
revisions to the original terms were incorporated into the proposal
that has been submitted to Malacañang. Many faculty members,
students and alumni from UP Diliman have also gained national
recognition for their contributions and achievements in the fields of
science and technology, arts and culture and sports.

As
UP looks forward to the centenary of its founding in the year 2008, UP
Diliman affirmed its own commitment to modernizing its facilities and
services. Many of the libraries are already computerized and are
providing automated services. It has also identified specific growth
areas, foremost of which are in engineering education,
interdisciplinary programs such as Material Science, Technology
Management and Archaeological Studies and International Studies. In
concordance with the UP System's plans of serving the population in
Northern Luzon, UP College Baguio will be expanded into an autonomous
university, while the UP Extension Program in San Fernando will be
upgraded to provide programs in technology training.

With
the strengthening of its research base under an Office of the Vice
Chancellor for Research and Development, the construction of a Science
Complex and an Engineering Complex, the development of various colleges
into National Centers of Excellence, and an outpouring of investments
into modernization, UP Diliman is poised to reassert its place among
the leading universities in the Asia-Pacific region.